Dimensio:I am attempting to learn the proper use of the human technique known as "sarcasm". I have yet to master the practice, however.

Oh, I see. So you just completely made up a position you imagine your opponents on the issue to have - a process not generally referred to as "sarcasm" but rather as "lying" - and then attempted to pin it to them so you could frame out an argument you want to have rather than oppose one anybody is actually making?

I find it rather amusing that you made the second comment in the thread an outright dishonest portrayal of the broad movement to strengthen gun control laws so you could try and build an argument you could attack that nobody actually supports then promptly went on to accuse another poster of being an "established liar".

gja:Alonjar: gja: OK, here we go.....The Police are NOT required to protect you. That is an understood truth. The laws and charter for their service bear this assertion out.Hence, they need no firepower greater than the populous at large (John Q Public).They do NOT receive training that is in any way equal to the armed forces.They are not afforded the latitude in their duties that the armed forces are given.(There is rarely, if ever, a need for a soldier or a Marine to file a report after killing an enemy. The police must always file and undergo investigation).So, if what I have read many times over is fair ("only trained military people should have these guns") and the police are none of them, then they should not have anything the public is not entitled to possess.

The police are not required to protect individuals. FACT.They do not undergo training equal to the armed forces. FACTAnytime they discharge their weapon (of any type) whether or not a death is involved, there are reports and investigations. FACTMany times has it been said, in reference to what we are typifying as 'Assault weapons/rifles' that "Only the trained military should have these".You can find it said all over FARK and sites too numerous to deny it's utterance.

The police are NOT military, nor even Para-military. They are a civilian law enforcement. So one would rationally and logically conclude they need only the level of weaponry on par with those they are chartered with enforcing laws on.

The other blind spot is that despite Police generally being trained to lower levels of proficiency than the military none of these people have ever put forth an opinion that military veterans be exempt from these laws in the same way that Police generally are. Hell, most states that have very strict carry laws have exemptions for retired police. Why not extend that to veterans? Because there are too many of us. That would exempt nearly 22 million people by Veterans Affairs numbers. We wouldn't want that would we?

I think it's probably significant that the last couple generations are the first veterans who aren't trusted enough to bring home their rifles. That says something about the dysfunctional relationship our government has with it's citizens.

It also kind of deconstructs all that idiotic talk about the 2nd amendment being outdated because of drones and tanks. First off, the military isn't full of robots with no free will. Second a drone or a tank is useless when the person behind it is removed from the equation. Third, veterans and other capable citizens *vastly* outnumber every cop, soldier and fed combined. That's always been kind of the point, any government bad enough to warrant the citizenry engaging in armed resistance is going to be farked.

/just to forestall the inevitable idiotic rejoinder: I don't advocate allowing soldiers to bring home crew served weaponry or missile launchers. I'm talking about the basic infantry rifle. That's all you need to fight an insurgency, at least for starters.

The thread started out fine, but then justtray started shiatting all over it with his idiotic stubborn insistence that police are somehow not civilians (despite it being blatantly wrong, and easy to check) and things just went downhill from there. I haven't been participating in the gun threads, because the whole debate reminds me of the Bill of Rights killing scares of the past... the war on drugs, the war on terror, the "violent music" garbage, etc. so I'm guessing all of them have pretty much played out like this.

Some people just don't respect the rights that our forefathers fought so hard for because they don't personally use them much and have been manipulated by this latest hysteria in to arguing that the state should remove more of those rights in exchange for an empty promise of "safety". Sad, but nothing new.

Wayne 985:Joe Blowme: stonicus: craig328: But here's the rub: suppose, one day, our dysfunctional government decides that those rights ARE frivolous and superfluous and you don't need them. Guess which amendment represents the ultimate means to address the loss of the others. The 2nd Amendment was written at a time that Americans were actively revolting against a government that was taxing them without representation, that would seize personal property to house foreign soldiers (3rd Amendment), that forced a government on them for which the people had no say and other assorted affronts. The 2nd Amendment is the only one that not only states a right but then goes further and explicitly declares that the right "shall not be infringed"

How cute... you still think the people can compete against the government in an armed conflict. That ship sailed many many years ago my friend. You'll never be able to compete with satellites and aircraft carriers and fighter jets and tanks.

Also, the right to bear arms is contingent on being part of a well regulated militia, not to just have them willy-nilly. Our founding fathers' laws and rules on being a well regulated militia are quite specific and are no-where near the context of "everyone can just own guns". Gun ownership came with a shiat-ton of regulations and rules and requirements, as it should.

And yet if that is all they meant then why did they not go arround and collect all the civilian guns? Because you are wrong and you know it.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed

Let me guess, they stopped teaching history in your middle school right?

And now lets see if you kow the definition of well regulated in the late 1700's, im guessing you dont but please continue

enforcerpsu:morgen_benner: macadamnut: BgJonson79: Mutiny32: Can we label the NRA as a hate organization yet?

Wouldn't the ACLU fall in the same category, then, as a group that defends the Constitution?

The NRA is a trade association for weapons manufacturers. It has nothing to do with the Constitution, which says nothing about private ownership of firearms.

I'l bite, though I truly hope I'm feeding a troll:

DC vs Heller ruled that we indeed do have the right to private ownership.

Anyone who tries to tell me the 2nd amendment was referring to a state militia instantly gets labeled as an idiot because the 2nd amendment clearly defines an individual's right to own firearms. This has been beaten to death and that side of the argument needs to stop using it. It makes them look extremely ignorant.

Wayne 985:HeWhoHasNoName: justtray: No, but not all rights are equal and if someone could present me with sound argument that taxing any of those things would have a statistically significant benefit, i would weigh that decision in the same manner.

You're dead wrong about not all rights being equal (although it's very revealing about how you think... yuck, by the way)...

Ethically, he's not wrong at all. The 13th amendment prohibits slavery. The 3rd prohibits troops from quartering themselves in your home. Those are not of equal value and the 13th is clearly more important.

Not necessarily.

We haven't had a problem with the Third Amendment, historically, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is of lesser value than the 13th. It just means that we don't haven't had recourse to use it much.

I mean, I have an electric drill in my house, and a couple of fire extinguishers. I use the drill quite a bit*. That doesn't mean the fire extinguisher is less important. It's just not used as much.

Epicedion:I don't care what you guarantee. You guaranteeing such a thing is totally worthless. Why don't you come back with some statistics on misuse or criminal use of firearms by police and compare them to the general public?

Now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Link) there were 794,300 police in the United States in 2010. According to the 2010 US Census (Link), there were 308,745,538 people total in the US. Subtract cops and you had 307,951,238 (not excluding other government agents, military, etc).

Roughly speaking, that leaves a rate of about 1.14% for wrongful firearm fatalities among cops and 4.19% among civilians.

stonicus:How cute... you still think the people can compete against the government in an armed conflict. That ship sailed many many years ago my friend. You'll never be able to compete with satellites and aircraft carriers and fighter jets and tanks.

Wayne 985:Epicedion: I don't care what you guarantee. You guaranteeing such a thing is totally worthless. Why don't you come back with some statistics on misuse or criminal use of firearms by police and compare them to the general public?

Now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Link) there were 794,300 police in the United States in 2010. According to the 2010 US Census (Link), there were 308,745,538 people total in the US. Subtract cops and you had 307,951,238 (not excluding other government agents, military, etc).

Roughly speaking, that leaves a rate of about 1.14% for wrongful firearm fatalities among cops and 4.19% among civilians.

To be clear, that's a murder rate among civilians and a much broader category of firearm "misconduct" fatalities for police, so the disparity is likely even larger.

Wayne 985:craig328: Hang on a second. Civilians ALREADY own weapons that are scaring the pants off people like you...and they don't result in "more harm than good" now. What logical process are you employing that leads you to believe that a civilian will be less adept with such a weapon than your average SWAT team member? Before you answer, it's fairly typical for a gun enthusiast (the folks who'd likely make up the bulk of people wanting to possess such items) to get more range time and trigger time on their weapons than police do. Many departments have their officers qualify only twice per year on their weapon. There are others who do it quarterly but even I (who wouldn't be confused with a gun enthusiast) go to the range more often than 4 times per year.

Automatic weapons are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to own in the United States. Don't pretend like they're even remotely common.

This is just flat-out wrong. It's been addressed before in this thread, but if you're willing to do the paperwork, you can get pre-1986 fully automatic weapons. The guy working across the street from me used to have a belt fed Browning that he had to tow on a trailer. Fully automatic weapons aren't as common because they're pricey, not because they're illegal.

Wayne 985:HeWhoHasNoName: justtray: No, but not all rights are equal and if someone could present me with sound argument that taxing any of those things would have a statistically significant benefit, i would weigh that decision in the same manner.

You're dead wrong about not all rights being equal (although it's very revealing about how you think... yuck, by the way)...

Ethically, he's not wrong at all. The 13th amendment prohibits slavery. The 3rd prohibits troops from quartering themselves in your home. Those are not of equal value and the 13th is clearly more important.

I would call them of equal - priceless - value. Having agents of a militaristic police state stationed in my own home, eating my food, listening to my private conversations, going through my things, taking my possessions as they desire, observing my activities within my own dwelling, reporting it all back to their government commanders and shackling me at the first observed transgression is as abhorrent to me as being sold and chained up in the fields on a plantation.

To me, a government soldier-enforcer in every bedroom is slavery to a police state, and the very notion is as repugnant to me as slavery to a cotton mogul.

PsiChick:...Because there is a very fundamental difference between the training and job of a police officer and the training and job of an average civilian. A police officer is not a civilian, they complete at least a year of college training and many years of on-the-job training. There is a reason for that. You cannot take a civilian, put them in a police uniform, and have a police officer. You have a civilian in a costume. A police officer is not a civilian.

A whole year? Wow. They must be the most well-trained and responsible people on the planet.

D135:I wondering if there is actually any real gun debate or whether this is just the best viral marketing campaing for firearms ever created.

/sales numbers dont lie

In that case the manufacturers were terribly unprepared and are currently failing to meet an unprecedented demand. The AR-15 is already popular rifle format made by dozens of companies, but none of them were ready for it to become the number one rifle in America.

No one makes money from an empty store.

/Democrats tried to dust off the old shtick of targeting unpopular guns./In the last twenty years the market changed drastically./I think they really stepped in it this time.

PsiChick:Epicedion: PsiChick: Or, you know, police have jobs requiring them to deal with violent nutjobs and just might need more specialized tools than are available to the general public.

I don't buy it, since the police aren't traipsing off to Violent Nutjobville to do their jobs. The violent nutjobs are in and around the general public. I'd say that the general public has a vested interest in being equivalently prepared to deal with the violent nutjobs, and the only difference is that the general public is legally discouraged from actively engaging with the violent nutjobs (but not severely restricted in the case that the violent nutjobs avail themselves to be unavoidable).

...Because there is a very fundamental difference between the training and job of a police officer and the training and job of an average civilian. A police officer is not a civilian, they complete at least a year of college training and many years of on-the-job training. There is a reason for that. You cannot take a civilian, put them in a police uniform, and have a police officer. You have a civilian in a costume. A police officer is not a civilian.

But they are people just like you and me and can go psycho just as easy as you or me... just looks a that Vegas cop who killed his family the other day. They are not super heroes. Just look at all the police corruption in Chicago and other cities. History, how does it work?

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks that police and law enforcement should be considered civilians and subject to the same weapons restrictions as the rest of us. That is, if the general public is prohibited from owning "assault weapons" then the police ought to as well, and if we're only able to buy fully automatic weapons that were registered before 1986 then so should they.

Because the police aren't a domestic army, they're a civilian (non-military) organization for law enforcement.

So. Much. THIS.

If us peons can have nothing, then why should police be able to? We are pillaged by the same criminals they face, only we face them BEFORE the cops show up. If they think we don't have a need to protect ourselves, then how can they justify THEY have a need to protect themselves?

This holds especially true for traffic cops. You mean to tell me that they NEED a firearm to write a speeding ticket? After all, the implication is if you don't stop for them, they can kill you over that speeding infraction.

stonicus:How cute... you still think the people can compete against the government in an armed conflict. That ship sailed many many years ago my friend. You'll never be able to compete with satellites and aircraft carriers and fighter jets and tanks.

Let's see here...how about we start listing the most recent examples that sink your ill-considered argument: Egypt, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam. That's just the ones you might have heard of. None of those had civilians with superior or even equal arms. Still, they fought governments who had satellites, carriers, jets and tanks...and they did (or are doing) well enough. In fact, when civilians take up arms in defense of their homes and families, they have a pretty good track record. Maybe consider making the acquaintance of a history book sometime.

Also, the right to bear arms is contingent on being part of a well regulated militia, not to just have them willy-nilly. Our founding fathers' laws and rules on being a well regulated militia are quite specific and are no-where near the context of "everyone can just own guns". Gun ownership came with a shiat-ton of regulations and rules and requirements, as it should.

Well, yet another illiterate turd. How unsurprising. Tell you what, while I'd be glad to copy pasta the 2nd Amendment for you, you've already demonstrated a kryptonite weakness to reading. How about a nice video instead?

Seriously, it's only 90 seconds. Just think...in less than 2 minutes, you can be exponentionally smarter than you are right now. Who wouldn't want that?

Wayne 985:craig328: Hang on a second. Civilians ALREADY own weapons that are scaring the pants off people like you...and they don't result in "more harm than good" now. What logical process are you employing that leads you to believe that a civilian will be less adept with such a weapon than your average SWAT team member? Before you answer, it's fairly typical for a gun enthusiast (the folks who'd likely make up the bulk of people wanting to possess such items) to get more range time and trigger time on their weapons than police do. Many departments have their officers qualify only twice per year on their weapon. There are others who do it quarterly but even I (who wouldn't be confused with a gun enthusiast) go to the range more often than 4 times per year.

Automatic weapons are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to own in the United States. Don't pretend like they're even remotely common.

I was referring to the less-threatening-to-your-underpants-aridity AR-15s. I just naturally assumed something even scarier would make you moist.

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks that police and law enforcement should be considered civilians and subject to the same weapons restrictions as the rest of us. That is, if the general public is prohibited from owning "assault weapons" then the police ought to as well, and if we're only able to buy fully automatic weapons that were registered before 1986 then so should they.

Because the police aren't a domestic army, they're a civilian (non-military) organization for law enforcement.

dittybopper:Carousel Beast: dittybopper: justtray: Is clearly not about not wanting police to have superior firepower. Its about trying to get someone to say, "police have to have it," so then you can say, "if they do we do too!" And that argument is just never going to gain traction amongst non gun nuts.

You've got it backwards: We already have it. The police already have it. It's been that way for decades, and we're fine with it.

Now the government (in this case, a local one) wants to make it so that only the police have it.

dofus:macadamnut: BgJonson79: Mutiny32: Can we label the NRA as a hate organization yet?

Wouldn't the ACLU fall in the same category, then, as a group that defends the Constitution?

The NRA is a trade association for weapons manufacturers. It has nothing to do with the Constitution, which says nothing about private ownership of firearms.

This. This. A dozen times this.

This constant harping about banning assault weapons "is taking away our God-given Constitutional Rights" is a load of baloney. M-16s are banned and (almost) no one biatches about it. The AR-15 is (was) a semi-auto M-16 before the Rambo Wannabes started making hot rods out of them.

The NRA doesn't give a damn where the legal/illegal bar is set. It gets paid by the people who manufacture hot rod parts at absurd profit margins.

/Wouldn't vote for an assault weapons ban//What would be the point?///There's already thousands (millions?) of unregistered/untraceable units out there

Funny you should mention that...The "M16" designation is a military designation for an assault rifle designed and developed by Armalite(Later Colt) for the US Army for use in combat. Initially, it came with a 15 round magazine, but during the Vietnam Conflict, it was determined that it was woefully ineffective both in magazine size, operation, and ease of use. The rifle was a piece of junk that broke down constantly unless kept pristine clean, which is kinda hard to do when you are slogging around in the Vietnamese jungle. Soldiers were expending rounds too quickly (being that there were just 15 of them) and it was decided to remove "Full Auto" from these guns, and until the A3 revision, it remained the standard to have Burst in place of Auto. Other flaws were addresses in later revisions of the rifle.The AR-15 is the exact same gun, except lacking a three-round burst. The "M" is just a military designation.Even the military doesn't use "Full Auto" versions anymore, albeit for different reasons (or maybe for the same?).

ZeroPly:Wayne 985: craig328: Hang on a second. Civilians ALREADY own weapons that are scaring the pants off people like you...and they don't result in "more harm than good" now. What logical process are you employing that leads you to believe that a civilian will be less adept with such a weapon than your average SWAT team member? Before you answer, it's fairly typical for a gun enthusiast (the folks who'd likely make up the bulk of people wanting to possess such items) to get more range time and trigger time on their weapons than police do. Many departments have their officers qualify only twice per year on their weapon. There are others who do it quarterly but even I (who wouldn't be confused with a gun enthusiast) go to the range more often than 4 times per year.

Automatic weapons are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to own in the United States. Don't pretend like they're even remotely common.

This is just flat-out wrong. It's been addressed before in this thread, but if you're willing to do the paperwork, you can get pre-1986 fully automatic weapons. The guy working across the street from me used to have a belt fed Browning that he had to tow on a trailer. Fully automatic weapons aren't as common because they're pricey, not because they're illegal.

Exactly. Manufacture for the civilian market is now a crime. The "pricey-ness" is also a form of regulation via the National Firearms Act.

HeWhoHasNoName:Wayne 985: HeWhoHasNoName: justtray: No, but not all rights are equal and if someone could present me with sound argument that taxing any of those things would have a statistically significant benefit, i would weigh that decision in the same manner.

You're dead wrong about not all rights being equal (although it's very revealing about how you think... yuck, by the way)...

Ethically, he's not wrong at all. The 13th amendment prohibits slavery. The 3rd prohibits troops from quartering themselves in your home. Those are not of equal value and the 13th is clearly more important.

I would call them of equal - priceless - value. Having agents of a militaristic police state stationed in my own home, eating my food, listening to my private conversations, going through my things, taking my possessions as they desire, observing my activities within my own dwelling, reporting it all back to their government commanders and shackling me at the first observed transgression is as abhorrent to me as being sold and chained up in the fields on a plantation.

To me, a government soldier-enforcer in every bedroom is slavery to a police state, and the very notion is as repugnant to me as slavery to a cotton mogul.

My friend, if you think American soldiers bunking down in your house for the night is as bad as a woman being sold, mutilated, raped, and beaten to death at her "owner's" whim, then you are very sheltered and have a poor understanding of history.

chairborne:It also kind of deconstructs all that idiotic talk about the 2nd amendment being outdated because of drones and tanks. First off, the military isn't full of robots with no free will. Second a drone or a tank is useless when the person behind it is removed from the equation. Third, veterans and other capable citizens *vastly* outnumber every cop, soldier and fed combined. That's always been kind of the point, any government bad enough to warrant the citizenry engaging in armed resistance is going to be farked.

There is something else that is rarely talked about: A significant portion of the military would join an insurgency, if the motivation was confiscation of guns.

That's because a very significant fraction of the military, especially combat arms specialties, come from people raised in the "Gun Culture". Why? Because they get to play with guns while getting paid to do so.

My brother went 0300 as a Marine, and became a marksmanship instructor, precisely because of that.

There was a survey done about 19 years ago where a group of Marines were asked about whether they would fire upon civilians who didn't turn in non-sporting firearms. The responses were predictable, to anyone familiar with the military and the gun culture.

PsiChick:Epicedion: PsiChick: Or, you know, police have jobs requiring them to deal with violent nutjobs and just might need more specialized tools than are available to the general public.

I don't buy it, since the police aren't traipsing off to Violent Nutjobville to do their jobs. The violent nutjobs are in and around the general public. I'd say that the general public has a vested interest in being equivalently prepared to deal with the violent nutjobs, and the only difference is that the general public is legally discouraged from actively engaging with the violent nutjobs (but not severely restricted in the case that the violent nutjobs avail themselves to be unavoidable).

...Because there is a very fundamental difference between the training and job of a police officer and the training and job of an average civilian. A police officer is not a civilian, they complete at least a year of college training and many years of on-the-job training. There is a reason for that. You cannot take a civilian, put them in a police uniform, and have a police officer. You have a civilian in a costume. A police officer is not a civilian.

The fundamental difference is regular gun owners are better trained with their firearms than the police. Gun owners tend to go to the range on a regular basis, many go every week. Police officers go once a year or two to practice up for their legally required qualification. They tend to be terrible shots.

Wayne 985:Ethically, he's not wrong at all. The 13th amendment prohibits slavery. The 3rd prohibits troops from quartering themselves in your home. Those are not of equal value and the 13th is clearly more important.

That's only because one is more currently relevant than the other. Slavery is still very much alive in America, but the military is so over-funded that basic quartering would never be a problem for them.

Maybe one day the situation will be different. All the amendments are equally important, some are just more current issues than the others.

Wayne 985:Wayne 985: Epicedion: I don't care what you guarantee. You guaranteeing such a thing is totally worthless. Why don't you come back with some statistics on misuse or criminal use of firearms by police and compare them to the general public?

Now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Link) there were 794,300 police in the United States in 2010. According to the 2010 US Census (Link), there were 308,745,538 people total in the US. Subtract cops and you had 307,951,238 (not excluding other government agents, military, etc).

Roughly speaking, that leaves a rate of about 1.14% for wrongful firearm fatalities among cops and 4.19% among civilians.

To be clear, that's a murder rate among civilians and a much broader category of firearm "misconduct" fatalities for police, so the disparity is likely even larger.

That's an irrelevant comparison, since it's only referencing Excessive Force complaints, and not general illegal use of firearms by police officers. That's on or off duty, since your goal here is to show that the police are so extra-special-responsible with guns that they get to use weapons you'd like to see disallowed to the general population (after all, what's stopping him from popping the 30-round AR-15 out of the trunk and going to town on the neighbor, other than a deep-rooted sense of civil responsibility).

The fact that on-duty cops shooting and killing people unnecessarily is as high as 25% of the general population's homicide rate isn't a particularly trust-inspiring number. It's nice to know that a cop is only 25% as likely as a random guy on the subway to shoot me to death.

Epicedion:PsiChick: ...Because there is a very fundamental difference between the training and job of a police officer and the training and job of an average civilian. A police officer is not a civilian, they complete at least a year of college training and many years of on-the-job training. There is a reason for that. You cannot take a civilian, put them in a police uniform, and have a police officer. You have a civilian in a costume. A police officer is not a civilian.

A whole year? Wow. They must be the most well-trained and responsible people on the planet.

Joe Blowme:But they are people just like you and me and can go psycho just as easy as you or me... just looks a that Vegas cop who killed his family the other day. They are not super heroes. Just look at all the police corruption in Chicago and other cities. History, how does it work?

OgreMagi:The fundamental difference is regular gun owners are better trained with their firearms than the police. Gun owners tend to go to the range on a regular basis, many go every week. Police officers go once a year or two to practice up for their legally required qualification. They tend to be terrible shots.

It would be so nice if people paid attention to the actual point I was making. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the fact that, even if police officers tend to be undertrained assholes, even in my own opinion, a civilian and police officer are different things and logically will need different weapons. It's about the fundamental nature of 'police officer' v. 'civilian', not the current state of America's police force.

dittybopper:chairborne: It also kind of deconstructs all that idiotic talk about the 2nd amendment being outdated because of drones and tanks. First off, the military isn't full of robots with no free will. Second a drone or a tank is useless when the person behind it is removed from the equation. Third, veterans and other capable citizens *vastly* outnumber every cop, soldier and fed combined. That's always been kind of the point, any government bad enough to warrant the citizenry engaging in armed resistance is going to be farked.

There is something else that is rarely talked about: A significant portion of the military would join an insurgency, if the motivation was confiscation of guns.

That's because a very significant fraction of the military, especially combat arms specialties, come from people raised in the "Gun Culture". Why? Because they get to play with guns while getting paid to do so.

My brother went 0300 as a Marine, and became a marksmanship instructor, precisely because of that.

There was a survey done about 19 years ago where a group of Marines were asked about whether they would fire upon civilians who didn't turn in non-sporting firearms. The responses were predictable, to anyone familiar with the military and the gun culture.

I faintly remember that. Didn't a significant number of the Marines say they would shoot the officer giving the order?

treesloth:rufus-t-firefly: Then the cops can set up shop outside and make sure that everyone who goes to the range is only carrying what is legal and arrest any violators.

So as a revenge tactic they should search people for whom there is no probable cause?

Yes by all means lets have people who think like this the only ones with guns. Lets ask the civil rights guys from the 50,60, 70s' if they think its ok to only let those fine men in blue have guns shall we? After all , they would never trample the rights of other even if ordered to right?

PsiChick:Epicedion: PsiChick: ...Because there is a very fundamental difference between the training and job of a police officer and the training and job of an average civilian. A police officer is not a civilian, they complete at least a year of college training and many years of on-the-job training. There is a reason for that. You cannot take a civilian, put them in a police uniform, and have a police officer. You have a civilian in a costume. A police officer is not a civilian.

A whole year? Wow. They must be the most well-trained and responsible people on the planet.

Joe Blowme: But they are people just like you and me and can go psycho just as easy as you or me... just looks a that Vegas cop who killed his family the other day. They are not super heroes. Just look at all the police corruption in Chicago and other cities. History, how does it work?

OgreMagi: The fundamental difference is regular gun owners are better trained with their firearms than the police. Gun owners tend to go to the range on a regular basis, many go every week. Police officers go once a year or two to practice up for their legally required qualification. They tend to be terrible shots.

It would be so nice if people paid attention to the actual point I was making. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the fact that, even if police officers tend to be undertrained assholes, even in my own opinion, a civilian and police officer are different things and logically will need different weapons. It's about the fundamental nature of 'police officer' v. 'civilian', not the current state of America's police force.

Fine, you are still wrong. They are civililans and are supposed to abide by the same laws as we do. In fact, they need to be held to a higher standard because they are in a position to abuse the trust (power) we have given to them.

Wayne 985:You think Joe Blow down the street is going to efficiently use a sub-machine gun and automatic rifle, compared to a SWAT team? Those will likely cause more harm than good in civilian hands. A shotgun or a handgun or even an AR-15 will protect a homeowner.

If something bizarre goes down and SWAT are called, then I'm more than willing to stand aside for them. You're not Rambo, even if you want to be.

Depends on Joe Blow doesn't it? Me for instance, the only advantage most SWAT members have over me is in numbers, not in proficiency. I've known a few SWAT guys and I've got plenty of vet friends who are better.

But you're right, I'm not Rambo. All *he* wanted was to go back to Bragg. Eff Bragg...

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks that police and law enforcement should be considered civilians and subject to the same weapons restrictions as the rest of us. That is, if the general public is prohibited from owning "assault weapons" then the police ought to as well, and if we're only able to buy fully automatic weapons that were registered before 1986 then so should they.

Because the police aren't a domestic army, they're a civilian (non-military) organization for law enforcement.

numbquil:Big Man On Campus: Fubini: This makes sense to me, at least a little.

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks that police and law enforcement should be considered civilians and subject to the same weapons restrictions as the rest of us. That is, if the general public is prohibited from owning "assault weapons" then the police ought to as well, and if we're only able to buy fully automatic weapons that were registered before 1986 then so should they.

Because the police aren't a domestic army, they're a civilian (non-military) organization for law enforcement.

PsiChick:It would be so nice if people paid attention to the actual point I was making. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the fact that, even if police officers tend to be undertrained assholes, even in my own opinion, a civilian and police officer are different things and logically will need different weapons. It's about the fundamental nature of 'police officer' v. 'civilian', not the current state of America's police force.

The police are consequently not in a war with the general public, no matter how much 'war on crime' rhetoric is used. They don't need assault weapons any more than the general public, because they live and work where we live and work. If anyone needs assault weapons, it's the people who live in the places that are too dangerous for the police to work without them.

OgreMagi:stonicus: craig328: But here's the rub: suppose, one day, our dysfunctional government decides that those rights ARE frivolous and superfluous and you don't need them. Guess which amendment represents the ultimate means to address the loss of the others. The 2nd Amendment was written at a time that Americans were actively revolting against a government that was taxing them without representation, that would seize personal property to house foreign soldiers (3rd Amendment), that forced a government on them for which the people had no say and other assorted affronts. The 2nd Amendment is the only one that not only states a right but then goes further and explicitly declares that the right "shall not be infringed"

How cute... you still think the people can compete against the government in an armed conflict. That ship sailed many many years ago my friend. You'll never be able to compete with satellites and aircraft carriers and fighter jets and tanks.

Also, the right to bear arms is contingent on being part of a well regulated militia, not to just have them willy-nilly. Our founding fathers' laws and rules on being a well regulated militia are quite specific and are no-where near the context of "everyone can just own guns". Gun ownership came with a shiat-ton of regulations and rules and requirements, as it should.

How many times do you have to be referred to DC vs Heller before it finally sinks in that it is an individual right, not a collective right? Or are you simply too stupid to figure out the farking obvious?

And FYI, the militia is defined as "everybody who isn't in the military or law enforcement".

I'm fine with the current ruling and situation. Just pointing out that the intent of the founding fathers was ruled impotent by the Heller decision. So just curious as to why people keep bringing it up. Don't say "militia, fight tyranny, revolution, etc" Just say "court said we could, no other reason."

(written to the proverbial you, by this part in the thread, the replies and quotes are so intermingled).

PsiChick:Epicedion: PsiChick: Or, you know, police have jobs requiring them to deal with violent nutjobs and just might need more specialized tools than are available to the general public.

I don't buy it, since the police aren't traipsing off to Violent Nutjobville to do their jobs. The violent nutjobs are in and around the general public. I'd say that the general public has a vested interest in being equivalently prepared to deal with the violent nutjobs, and the only difference is that the general public is legally discouraged from actively engaging with the violent nutjobs (but not severely restricted in the case that the violent nutjobs avail themselves to be unavoidable).

...Because there is a very fundamental difference between the training and job of a police officer and the training and job of an average civilian. A police officer is not a civilian, they complete at least a year of college training and many years of on-the-job training. There is a reason for that. You cannot take a civilian, put them in a police uniform, and have a police officer. You have a civilian in a costume. A police officer is not a civilian.

Actually, the amount of training varies greatly by unit and city. Many police departments do require a 1 year certification course, and some on the job training, but most departments do not provide "years" of on the job training, other than experience.

I've got a LOT of law enforcement colleagues and training partners, and I mix with a lot of officers, new and old, at various training seminars, and outside of SWAT, most department officers that come to various emergency response and other types of classes are ridiculously inept and undertrained, and most of the civilians in the class are usually better equipped, because they don't suffer from the "I'm a cop, therefore I'm somehow a super badass that doesn't have to deal with all these rules" issues. In fact, where a lot of the guys i see fall flat fail is going slow and learning, rather than rushing in and acting like they already know everything.

Cops that are good, are good because of experience doing their job. They are also the guys who spend time and energy to go out to training seminars and engage in voluntary extra training in a lot of fields above and beyond what they need for their day to day activities. A larger part of that group, however, are little better trained than the average TactiCool Joe who put on a badge and went through the training academy.

Any assertion that police are now some sort of paramilitary force that are not civilians but are some special excerpt of society is both laughable and, in the general sense of things, scary.

OgreMagi:The fundamental difference is regular gun owners are better trained with their firearms than the police. Gun owners tend to go to the range on a regular basis, many go every week. Police officers go once a year or two to practice up for their legally required qualification. They tend to be terrible shots.

Except, of course, those among them who are also gun nuts.

If you watch the video of the Empire State Shooting, you can see that one officer does everything right (Turns sideways to reduce profile, finds some cover, pulls gun, uses two hands to shoot, has a good stance, immediately holsters gun afterwards), and the other one doesn't appear to do anything right: He's shooting with one hand (bad), moving while shooting (bad), and doesn't seem to care where his bullets might be going.

I bet I can tell which one goes to the range for fun, and which one only when he had to qualify.

PsiChick:...in my own opinion, a civilian and police officer are different things and logically will need different weapons. It's about the fundamental nature of 'police officer' v. 'civilian', not the current state of America's police force.

I'm curious about this mindset and would like to ask a question. There are those who claim that the fundamental nature of the job of a police officer suggests they should be better armed than other, non-police civilians. What sort of situations do you discern the police requiring superior arms that civilians would not have an equal need to have?

Bank robberies? Those people in the bank are civilians and would be the first people with the opportunity to respond.

Civil insurrections? Again, these happen in public so the first people to respond would be other citizens. Indeed, as we saw in New Orleans, Los Angeles and that I personally witnessed in St. Petersburg, FL several years back, police can often be stretched too thin to respond.

Carjackings? Rapes? To such I'd ask how often a victim of such a crime has a personal police protector there 24/7 to ensure the presence of the police weapon to deter the crime?

Seriously, though...what situations do police encounter that require the presence of such weapons such that the situation doesn't affect civilians first and foremost?

PsiChick:Epicedion: PsiChick: ...Because there is a very fundamental difference between the training and job of a police officer and the training and job of an average civilian. A police officer is not a civilian, they complete at least a year of college training and many years of on-the-job training. There is a reason for that. You cannot take a civilian, put them in a police uniform, and have a police officer. You have a civilian in a costume. A police officer is not a civilian.

A whole year? Wow. They must be the most well-trained and responsible people on the planet.

Joe Blowme: But they are people just like you and me and can go psycho just as easy as you or me... just looks a that Vegas cop who killed his family the other day. They are not super heroes. Just look at all the police corruption in Chicago and other cities. History, how does it work?

OgreMagi: The fundamental difference is regular gun owners are better trained with their firearms than the police. Gun owners tend to go to the range on a regular basis, many go every week. Police officers go once a year or two to practice up for their legally required qualification. They tend to be terrible shots.

It would be so nice if people paid attention to the actual point I was making. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the fact that, even if police officers tend to be undertrained assholes, even in my own opinion, a civilian and police officer are different things and logically will need different weapons. It's about the fundamental nature of 'police officer' v. 'civilian', not the current state of America's police force.

No, it happens to be about constitutional rights. As other have stated, there is a way to amend the constitution but no one seems to want to try that because thy know it would fail so they will try to doit via executive orders and such. Civilians ofter face the same dangers as police, only we do it before the cops arrive.

OgreMagi:The fundamental difference is regular gun owners are better trained with their firearms than the police. Gun owners tend to go to the range on a regular basis, many go every week. Police officers go once a year or two to practice up for their legally required qualification. They tend to be terrible shots.

chairborne:Wayne 985:You think Joe Blow down the street is going to efficiently use a sub-machine gun and automatic rifle, compared to a SWAT team? Those will likely cause more harm than good in civilian hands. A shotgun or a handgun or even an AR-15 will protect a homeowner.

If something bizarre goes down and SWAT are called, then I'm more than willing to stand aside for them. You're not Rambo, even if you want to be.

Depends on Joe Blow doesn't it? Me for instance, the only advantage most SWAT members have over me is in numbers, not in proficiency. I've known a few SWAT guys and I've got plenty of vet friends who are better.

But you're right, I'm not Rambo. All *he* wanted was to go back to Bragg. Eff Bragg...

And for the record i am proficient with the M-16, M249, and M2. Not the mp5 though so he may have a point on the smg thingy.

dittybopper:OgreMagi: The fundamental difference is regular gun owners are better trained with their firearms than the police. Gun owners tend to go to the range on a regular basis, many go every week. Police officers go once a year or two to practice up for their legally required qualification. They tend to be terrible shots.

Except, of course, those among them who are also gun nuts.

If you watch the video of the Empire State Shooting, you can see that one officer does everything right (Turns sideways to reduce profile, finds some cover, pulls gun, uses two hands to shoot, has a good stance, immediately holsters gun afterwards), and the other one doesn't appear to do anything right: He's shooting with one hand (bad), moving while shooting (bad), and doesn't seem to care where his bullets might be going.

I bet I can tell which one goes to the range for fun, and which one only when he had to qualify.

aka the one who probably didnt shoot one of the nine innocent bystanders or the one who probably shot most if not all of them.

PsiChick:It would be so nice if people paid attention to the actual point I was making. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the fact that, even if police officers tend to be undertrained assholes, even in my own opinion, a civilian and police officer are different things and logically will need different weapons. It's about the fundamental nature of 'police officer' v. 'civilian', not the current state of America's police force.

The point a lot of people are making are that police are civilians. That apparently cannot be said enough. They are not military. They are civilians. Law enforcement is not a military group. Your local police are not part of the military command. Your state police are not related to the national guard or army bases. Federal police work is done by Department of Justice, not the Pentagon. Police are civilians.

dr-shotgun:AbiNormal: It doesn't specify which type of arms you have a right to.

And that's the rub, isn't it?

We do place limits on Constitutional rights, absolutely.

And we do so only when there is absolute clarity that the limitation of that right will have a meaningful, demonstrable impact on public safety.

This is the contention of this debate; there is no farking data to say that banning so called "assault weapons" will have any meaningful impact on actual public safety.

1- They are used in a statistically insignificant portion of overall firearm crimes (less than 2%).2- There is no data to support that the use of an "assault weapon" has any impact on the lethality of those crimes (i.e. they would just as easily happened had another weapon been used).3- There is data to suggest that the limitation of these weapons in civilian hands would be detrimental to the cause of legal self defense (especially magazine capacity bans).

On this last point, I would say that there are almost no scenarios where a 30 round AR magazine has been necessary for a citizen to defend themselves, but there are *many* cases where civilians have needed more than 10 rounds to adequately defend themselves. There is also little/no data to suggest that magazine capacity has an impact on actual firearm crimes though.

So yes, we do understand that Constitutional rights have limitations. Where we disagree is in the belief that limiting the 2nd Amendment, as is being proposed currently, offers any net benefit to society.

I am not for or against gun ownership. I don't think the mass shootings that have occurred happened because we have access to guns. I think they happen because we do not have adequate access to mental health care in the US. Thanks mostly to Reagan shutting down all of the mental health facilities in the US in the 80's.